ted to hear.

He listened for quite a minute, and then rousing himself from his half
cataleptic state, he uttered a stentorian hail.

"Right, Josh, right!" shouted Will. "I've found it at last."

"He's found it at last!" growled Josh, wiping his wet brow. "Why, he
must have got to the bottom then. Are you all right?"

"All right!" came back faintly; and Josh gave his hands a rub, his arms
a stretch, and then leaving the rope, he seated himself on the stones,
thrust his hands into his pockets, and out of one he drew forth a heavy
clasp-knife, from the other a steel tobacco-box, which he opened, took
out some roll tobacco, and proceeded to cut himself off a piece to chew.

As he was thus occupied a strange, sharp, rustling noise fell upon his
ear, and then stopped.

He listened, and looked round, but saw nothing.

"Can't be snakes up here!" he muttered, and then he became all alert
once more, for there was a noise from below, as of a small stone having
fallen.

"What's he doing of now?" growled Josh. "Here, I wish I hadn't come.
Eh! What!"

Just at the same time, after carefully groping his way for a very short
distance along the gallery, Will was warned by his expiring candle to
return to the mouth, which he reached just in time to hear a curious
whistling sound and then a long-drawn splash.

"What's that?" he exclaimed, and then his blood ran cold as, in a hoarse
voice that he hardly knew as his own, he shouted up the shaft:

"Josh, Josh! The rope!"

It was in a frantic hope that his idea was wrong, and that it was not
the rope which he had heard _whish_ through the air, and then fall
below.

Just then the candle wick toppled over on one side in a little pool of
molten composition, sputtered for an instant, sent up a blue flash or
two, and went out.

CHAPTER FIVE.

WILL FINDS HIMSELF IN A PAINFUL POSITION.

It was a position perilous enough to alarm the stoutest-hearted man, and
awkward enough without the danger to puzzle any schemer, and for a few
minutes the lad stood with one hand resting on the rock, and the cold
perspiration gathering on his forehead, trying to think what he had
better do.

As he stood, there was a low whispering noise that came up the shaft--a
noise that puzzled him as to what it could be, for he did not realise
that the water down below had, when set in motion by the fall of the
rope, kept on lapping at the side, and that this lapping sound echoed
and repeated its